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Gattis taking it slow with oblique strain

Gattis taking it slow with oblique strain

ATLANTA -- Braves catcher Evan Gattis has yet to be cleared for baseball activities 10 days into his stint on the disabled list with a right oblique strain.

"It's a balancing act between trying to push it and trying to let it heal at the same time, so I'm just going through my treatment," Gattis said.

The 26-year-old rookie felt the muscle grab when he swung awkwardly at a slider in the seventh inning of the Braves' game against the Mets on June 17. Gattis finished the game behind the plate without getting another at-bat. He will be eligible to be activated from the 15-day DL on Wednesday, but the current pace of his healing process indicates that target may be a touch optimistic.

"He hasn't swung a bat or thrown a baseball or anything like that," manager Fredi Gonzalez said. "Everybody's oblique is different, every injury is different. You can't say, 'This is an oblique, this is 15 days.' Well, 15 days for you may be 18 for somebody else and may be 30 for somebody else."

Gattis said the Braves would wait until the area was completely free of soreness before he began any sort of rehab assignment or returned to baseball activities, but he has noticed some encouraging signs in the past few days.

"As soon as it happened, it was really sore and balled up," Gattis said. "I did get an injection that day that helped quite a bit. It was sore for a couple of days, but right after that, it felt a lot better. I think any soreness I get now is from treatment and doing my core work and all that stuff."

Gattis suffered a similar injury in the final week of the 2011 season, when he was with Class A Rome. He had the luxury of giving the muscle an entire offseason's worth of rest without treatment in that case. His current road to recovery remains on an uncertain timetable as the Braves head toward the All-Star break.

Eric Single is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.